Pre-Conditiioning

We had rain again on Wednesday and fog on Thursday and this morning so it's still to wet to cut wheat.  M decided we may as well do our cow work while we had the time.  He had planned to bring the cows home from R's as well as the ones down by Richland, but the road was too muddy to get them to where the rest of the cows were so we will have to work them in two bunches.

Today we worked the ones close to home at the neighbor's.  He bought the land adjoining ours a couple of years ago and built a nice corral system so it worked well to run the cows up there.  R and I got chewed out because we were too efficient and had the cows rounded up and out the gate too quickly.  M was coming with the trailer to haul the bulls home and wasn't where he wanted to be before we had cows coming at him.  I thought it would take longer to round them up and get them to the gate.  We got them down the road and into the corral without incident so it was all okay.

We had to sort the cows from the calves and run all the calves through, give them two vaccinations each and put a button tag in their ears.  Our calves are age- and source-verified this year so require the buttons.  The buttons can be read by a scanner and the calf traced back to us.  We were done with 70 calves by noon with a minimum of mishaps.  R got kicked once, early in the day.  J got stabbed by the M with the vaccinating syringe. Does that eliminate the need for a tetanus shot after he stepped on a nail yesterday?  Two calves got through untouched so we had to sort them out and run them through again.  We also found a steer with one nut still intact so they had to use the bander on it.  No major problems and decent weather.  I made a big deal of the sun shining when we started out, and then it clouded up and got windy.  It's sunny again now but still windy.

They cut out the bulls (two of ours and two of the neighbor's) and hauled them home where L had a great roast beef and potato lunch ready for us.  After lunch M decided they could move the cows from R's so he and R went to do that while Pete and I walked the two miles home--against the wind.  We can start all over again tomorrow after he does some work on his chute.  I always enjoy having a good reason to be outside with my family on a nice day even if we're working.